Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday March 01, 2013 @10:10AM
from the good-luck dept.

Today at 10:10am ET (15:10 UTC) SpaceX will be launching an unmanned Dragon capsule, perched atop a Falcon9 rocket, to the International Space Station. The capsule is filled with about 1,200 pounds of supplies for the ISS crew, and it is scheduled to arrive early Saturday morning. The return trip, on March 25, will bring over 2,000 pounds of cargo back to Earth when Dragon re-enters the atmosphere and falls into the Pacific Ocean. Both NASA and SpaceX are covering the launch live. For text and pictures, you can watch on SpaceX Launch Central or NASA's launch blog. For streaming video, check out NASA TV. Spaceflight Now has both, and their live updates provide a bit more detail. SpaceX's press kit for the mission (PDF) explains how the launch will proceed:
"At 1 minute, 10 seconds after liftoff, Falcon 9 reaches supersonic speed. The vehicle will pass through the area of
maximum aerodynamic pressure—max Q—15 seconds later. This is the point when mechanical stress on the rocket peaks due to a combination of the rocket’s velocity and resistance created by the Earth’s atmosphere. Around 170 seconds into the flight, two of the first-stage engines will shut down to reduce the rocket’s acceleration. (Its mass, of course, has been continually dropping as its propellants are being used up.) The remaining engines will cut off around 3 minutes into the flight—an event known as main-engine cutoff, or MECO. At this point, Falcon 9 is 80 kilometers (50 miles) high, traveling at 10 times the speed of sound. Five seconds after MECO, the first and second stages will separate. Seven seconds later, the second stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine ignites to begin a 6-minute burn that brings Falcon 9 and Dragon into low-Earth orbit."

Just saw this tweeted.
SpaceX founder and CEO just tweeted: "Issue with Dragon thruster pods. System inhibiting three of four from initializing. About to command inhibit override."
I wonder how this differs from NASA protocols.

Looking forward to SpaceX making these flights "routine" (or at least as routine as spaceflight gets), and then scale up -- they've been having issues raising their production and launch rate up until now.

As designed, the flight computer then recomputed a new ascent profile in real time to ensure Dragon’s entry into orbit for subsequent rendezvous and berthing with the ISS. This was achieved, and there was no effect on Dragon or the cargo resupply mission.

Roger Krone, have you taken to posting anonymously and referring to 2 year old articles have you. Smacks of desperation as yet another launch goes off without exploding.

Show me a launch company anywhere in history who didn't have failures in the development phase, who didn't increase prices and got there on time. His price might have increased since the proposal stages, but he is still cheaper than the swollen, over-sized pork-barrel receivers.

What I don't like about Elon Musk's companies, is when they have problems (like with Tesla), instead of fixing them, they go and attack the reporter. So that Forbes article was astroturf bombed, so much so, that the reported had to write a follow up piece.

And what is he supposed to do when a reporter lies and fabricates evidence? Was GM wrong to go after NBC for rigging truck fuel tanks to explode on Dateline?

I can appreciate a healthy skepticism. I can appreciate that someone might have a preference for something, say gas vs. electric. But if you are putting out a show that looks like a legitimate test, fake the results and then act like it doesn't matter because you're just entertainment, you're a fucking asshole and should be treated like one. It demonstrates a disgusting contempt for the truth.

Why don't they toss their garbage bags down towards earth? Wouldn't it enter the atmosphere within a few weeks and burn up?

Orbital mechanics doesn't work that way. Throwing them "down" would cause them to go into a more elliptical orbit that could eventually take the garbage bags above the station with a downward vector. They could wind up hitting the station itself, and maybe damaging it.

You have to throw the garbage bags behind you so that they no longer have the velocity to be in the same orbit as you.

I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of conservation of mass. What do you think they do with the mass they launch up there? convert it to energy using a Mr. Fusion? Or do you think they would just jettison 2000lbs into some random orbit? One of the biggest logistical challenges the ISS has, is that w/o the Space Shuttle, there has been limited "downmass" capability.

Although most of the downmass is the results of experiements and broken/obsolete equipment, all the garbage and of course the "digested" food they take up there need to come back down to the ground too. Just like camping in many remote national parks, if you pack it in, you must pack it out (poop included).

Bit o trivia for you - if you do a multi-day rafting trip down the Grand Canyon, you *have* to pack out your poop. Reason being with so many people doing that trip in what is a fairly small patch of land around the river, you would quickly see the waste becoming a nuisance.

I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of conservation of mass. What do you think they do with the mass they launch up there?

I thought they would just keep most of the stuff there. It's not like they lack... space. And yes, I know it means more energy for attitude control, but it also means longer periods without activations, right?

Or do you think they would just jettison 2000lbs into some random orbit?

No, they could throw it back to Earth. Obviously not at once, but in small burnable-on-reentry packets.

One of the biggest logistical challenges the ISS has, is that w/o the Space Shuttle, there has been limited "downmass" capability.

Although most of the downmass is the results of experiements and broken/obsolete equipment, all the garbage and of course the "digested" food they take up there need to come back down to the ground too. Just like camping in many remote national parks, if you pack it in, you must pack it out (poop included).

Difference is my poop doesn't incinerate itself if I trow it over the cliff. The case of broken/obsolete (and large or toxic) equipment and of experiment results are the only that make sense to me. Or

Have you ever seen gravity being explained with a bowlingball on a trampoline? There is your answer. If you shoot a marble into a smaller orbit, it'll have an ellipse orbit and so it might hit ISS again.

The world is an increasingly disappointing place. But stories like this are just awesome. Let's just step back here, the story is about a fully automated rocket developed and launched for cheap by a private company, which is going to perform an automated docking procedure with a gigantic orbiting station to resupply its international crew of astronauts from countries who once blew eachother to bits but have somehow managed to remain largely peaceful for 60-70 years.

And it's routine enough by now that I had to click to expand the story on/.

Don't forget, you observed the story on an electronic device capable of downloading this story, associated videos, and inane commentary from across the country or the world, and receive it wirelessly on your end, and you probably had the gall to complain about download speed.

Both the launch company and congressman may have cle-in tickets.
I did this a couple years ago. we were at the standard press area about 3 miles away. The rocket flare was much brighter than i had anticipated- almost too bright to watch. However it was quieter than I had thought.

I believe the solar panels on Dragon were supposed to deploy but did not. There was a lot of chatter I did not understand and then a generic "the vehicle is orbital but experienced an anomaly, than you for joining us" message.

Although I'm also curious to know exactly what went wrong, I think it's wise of SpaceX to cut the feed until they have a solid understanding of what happened and what they can do to get the mission back on track.

If that proved to be true, and there were logs to prove the vehicle was not properly fuelled, then it would be entirely the fault of said mission control engineers that the vehicle did not perform as anticipated.

SpaceX founder and CEO just tweeted: "Issue with Dragon thruster pods. System inhibiting three of four from initializing. About to command inhibit override."
Solar array deployment was delayed while engineers attempt to regain attitude control of Dragon.

Rumor has it John Broder is about to release a story that claims Dragon won't make it all the way to the space station. The capsule SpaceX lent him died somewhere in Connecticut and had to be towed back to Cape Canaveral. Alleged leaked picture here [abcnews.com]. No word on whether Musk will issue a rebuttal.

Sadly it looks like you're not completely wrong. Word is that the solar panels haven't deployed. It seems that they're trying to figure out if the module has enough battery power to attempt an ISS docking anyway. I don't know if the spacecraft has an ability to charge from the ISS, or if they would conceivably attempt a spacewalk to deploy the panels, but I'm sure they wouldn't risk stranding a capsule with flat batteries on one of the ISS's docking rings.

from "Spaceflight Now"
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013
1527 GMT (10:27 a.m. EST)
"It appears that although it achieved Earth orbit, Dragon is experiencing some kind problem right now," said John Insprucker, SpaceX's Falcon 9 product manager. We'lll have to learn about the nature of what happened. According to procedure, we expect a press conference to be held a few hours from now. At that time, further info may be available."

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013
1543 GMT (10:43 a.m. EST)
SpaceX founder and CEO just tweeted: "Issue with Dragon thruster pods. System inhibiting three of four from initializing. About to command inhibit override."
Solar array deployment was delayed while engineers attempt to regain attitude control of Dragon.

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013
1736 GMT (12:36 p.m. EST)
A NASA official says three Dragon thruster pods are required to approach the International Space Station.
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013
1726 GMT (12:26 p.m. EST)
The Dragon spacecraft's Draco thrusters are mounted on four pods. Two of the pods contain five thrusters and the other two contain four thrusters.
According to SpaceX, the pods are positioned to provide complete control of the spacecraft's direction of motion (X, Y and Z axis), as well as orientation (roll, p